


eternal return

by all_these_ghosts



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Movie: Fight The Future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-04 22:06:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14029791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_these_ghosts/pseuds/all_these_ghosts
Summary: Utah’s supposed to be beautiful.





	eternal return

He runs the knuckle of his thumb along her spine. Every ridge of every vertebra, every mile of pale, smooth skin. Her sigh is the only sound in the room.

Until he says “I love you,” carefully, like he’s testing it out. Like it’s a brand-new hypothesis and not a truth he’s been fighting for years.

She snuggles closer and for a second he thinks she’s going to say it. Instead she mumbles, ”That’s the oxytocin talking.”

His mouth feels dry. “It’s not,” he says. The silence is absolute. Her rib cage rises and falls under his hands. Then: “You know it’s not.”

He imagines her like the snake nestled in the small of her back, shedding her skin to be born anew, into some other, better life.

Utah’s supposed to be beautiful. The canyons and the sunsets and her red, red hair.

Quietly she says, “I still have to go,” and in an instant he sees the next few days, laid out before him like pages in a book. She packs up her apartment, every blouse and pair of socks expertly folded. She clears off her desk — _she has one now_ , he reminds himself, _you never gave her that_ — and compiles three binders full of notes for whoever tries to replace her. He drives her to the airport. He doesn’t say goodbye. He doesn’t say anything at all.

When he falls asleep he dreams: a plane lands. Parched air, the sun on her freckled arms, her heels clicking on the tarmac. From the dry earth something rises up, and he wants to warn her; he calls her name but she can’t hear him from two thousand miles away. It towers over the landscape, throwing the earth into shadow. It swallows her whole.

He sits up gasping and finds her still beside him, and wide awake. He must have been screaming. “Mulder,” she whispers, and pulls him down to her like she isn’t three days from walking away. The dream recedes, already half-forgotten.

Tomorrow he’ll start fighting his own monsters. Her lips on his, insistent and hotter than any desert sun. Her body uncoiling, her hands writing answers across his shoulder blades. Tomorrow, he’ll start. Tonight she’s still here.


End file.
